


Unbound

by lonelywalker



Category: Prometheus (2012)
Genre: Androids, Dubious Morality, F/M, Post-Canon, Pregnancy, Yuletide 2012
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 03:31:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All children, except one, grow up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unbound

**Author's Note:**

  * For [M_Leigh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_Leigh/gifts).



>   
> _…so I drew these tides of men into my hands  
>  and wrote my will across the sky in stars  
>  \- T. E. Lawrence_

On the first day, David runs around the entire ship twice.

On the second day, he discovers how many regulation push-ups he can do without stopping (526).

On the third day, he recalls an epic lyric poem composed in Latin, and mentally translates it to Greek, English, Proto-Indo-European, and, for a laugh, Basque.

On the fourth day, he decides to devote his considerable cognitive resources to comprehending the concept of fear.

By the sixth day he feels he’s just about got it.

On the seventh day, Elizabeth says, “Hello.”

“Hello,” David says. “Would you like some tea?”

***

“Capabilities.”

The word echoes in his mind, although he knows it had never done so in real life. This is one of his earliest memories. He is 1.80 meters tall and four days old. He is David 8. His eyes focus on Peter Weyland, his mind locates the meaning signified by each word. He is learning.

“Each creature has its capabilities, David. Every person has their limits. No man can run faster than the speed of light. No snake can fly. Today, many of the things we thought impossible even a generation ago are coming to pass. We are creating life from steel. We are reaching for the stars and snatching them out of the sky.”

Weyland gazes intently at him. David knows what he looked like as a young man, but he also knows it is not a memory.

“You, David, exceed the mental and physical capabilities of every human on this planet, and every human we can truly _call_ human who will ever exist. You look like one of us, you feel like one of us, you can even act like one of us if necessary. But never delude yourself. You’ll never be a real boy.”

 _A real boy._ David blinks. The insinuation of a reference is there, but the information is missing. He will need to ask the databanks or – here he smiles – visit the library. He has to be careful among all those books, turn aged paper with deliberately gentle fingers, but he enjoys the way it feels, just sitting there amid all that knowledge.

He is four days old and he knows that much.

***

There is a curious interpersonal dynamic between two people, David thinks. As a member of the _Prometheus_ crew he had been able to speak when spoken to, and to volunteer information when necessary. Small talk had certainly not been required.

He is familiar with human psychology and physiology, the science and the theory. It had been no particular surprise that Elizabeth had been willing to reassemble him, but unwilling to talk to or even be in the same room with him for their first week onboard the Architects’ ship (which does not, naturally, operate according to Earth hours, but David keeps track nonetheless). She had been physically battered and emotionally distraught, and there was little David could do for her on either account.

So, taking care to check that he could still occasionally hear her breathing, he had devoted himself to ensuring that his body was in correct working order, and to exploring the resources and workings of the ship. It’s been quite fascinating.

He tells Elizabeth this while she drinks, eying the tea with more disbelief than genuine caution. Silence, he feels, is somehow awkward, and this is more of a briefing than small talk.

“I have disabled the ship’s various transmitters,” he reports. “I find it highly unlikely that, given the distances involved, anyone will stumble onto us by chance.”

“Highly unlikely,” Elizabeth repeats dully. She is still looking at the tea.

“Yes. There are weapons systems aboard, none of them biological or a risk to our wellbeing, but I believe our chances in any violent conflict would be… limited.”

“I believe you may be right.” She looks up, meeting his eyes. “David… this is tea.”

“Indeed.”

“We’re onboard an unmanned alien vessel deep into unexplored territory, light years away from anything that might be called a tea plant, let alone England, and you…” Her eyes narrow. “Am I dreaming?”

“No. Although I understand your concern.”

Elizabeth stands up, swallowing the remaining liquid with the air of someone who has nothing left to lose, and paces over to the wall onto which various flight data is being projected. “I’m glad you understand my concern, David.”

His understanding of phatic communication may be shaky, but he is reasonably sure this is not the way it should be carried out. “It appears that the Architects have similar nutritional needs to yourself. However, given limited storage space, they chose to synthesize a substance that…” He lets his voice trail off. She’s clearly not listening. “It’s tea because you need it to be tea.”

She sniffs the cup and hands it back to him. “I can’t begin to figure out how that would work.”

“It’s a problem I’m working on, but I suspect…”

Elizabeth walks away from him and never once looks back.

***

There is a trope in human storytelling, David discovers in the library – the longing of an object, robot, or alien visitor to be human. It seems like utter vanity at first, a way to reassure each other that being human is far better than being a fluffy toy rabbit, but as an explanation it doesn’t quite satisfy his curiosity.

Still, the theme repeats itself frequently enough in children’s stories for him to sit gingerly down on a bright plastic seat in the corner of the kids’ section. There are rarely any actual children entrusted with such delicate paper books – far better to let them smash away at Perspex tablets – but the décor has never been adjusted for the scholars who now wander the halls. David quite likes it.

_All children, except one, grow up._

He can read faster than humans, but the care he needs to take with the paper means he slows down, lingers over each paragraph, digests the meaning. He has more formal preparations he should be making for his true task, the shepherding of the _Prometheus_ , and there will be time enough during that voyage to read almost an entire library of literary works. But something keeps him seated: he just needs to know what happens on the next page. 

And the next.

***

“Did you choose your name?”

The question comes as he has his head stuck into a below-floor vent, attempting to discover the mechanism that controls the room's air intake. He straightens up and self-consciously arranges his hair into its correct parting. “Did you choose yours?”

Once his forbears had been designed to be deliberately servile – an attempt to show their human owners that they were completely unthreatening. The humans had been repulsed by that slimy, cloying politeness. David had been designed to be a little more… genuine.

Elizabeth almost smiles, and comes over to sit on the console next to where he’s crouched on the floor. “My parents. An old family name.”

“Ah.” David nods. “A repeating pattern. My name was determined in a similar manner. The previous series had names beginning with A, B, C… Did you know that T. E. Lawrence, that is, Lawrence of Arabia, was once known under the name of Shaw?”

“No. I didn’t.”

“And Elizabeth Shaw, no relation, was the wife of Herman Melville.”

“No.” She frowns slightly. “Unless you’re making a misguided attempt to call our present course an Ahab-like quest for a white whale, I don’t see your point.”

David shrugs and sticks his hand down the vent, searching for the correct valve. “No point.”

There's something almost like alarm in her eyes as she crouches down opposite him, sneaking a look at the vent. “You always have a point. What’s down there?”

“A secondary system related to the mechanism that recycles the oxygen. Although there is no problem at present, it seems reasonable that I should garner a working knowledge of such systems in the event repairs may be required.”

She’s still looking, eyes narrowed. “I’m the only one who needs oxygen.”

“True.” His index finger comes up ink-black with oil. “Rest assured I have no intention of letting you asphyxiate, Elizabeth.”

“I know.”

He could have killed her in a variety of different ways by now. He has the knowledge and physical ability to orchestrate any number of complex murder scenes. But, if he had truly needed her dead, one snap of the neck would have done it.

David smiles. “Who else would listen to my trivia?”

He sits back against the wall, studying the panel he’s removed. And, little by little, she edges closer.

***

David has tasks onboard the _Prometheus_ but, barring accidents or malfunctions, they are tasks that take him a minimum of time. They would barely take a human longer, but he has the advantage in that he cannot possibly go mad.

He reads books at first and then discovers the attraction of films, the sounds of other voices. He has trouble, sometimes, imagining a fictional world - there are always frustratingly absent details the author never bothered to mention. Onscreen, everything is clear but, again and again, the trope re-emerges. Humans constantly desire to be something they are not – an adult, a child, a queen, a superhero, married, single. Some identities are easily changed, some impossible to escape.

David knows exactly what he looks like, but he unlocks the door to one of the crew’s quarters and steps in front of the mirror regardless. In this moment, in this instant of time, he seems human. He _is_ human. But, as time passes, as he never sleeps and never ages, as the crew wakes up and shies away from him with every superhuman feat or subhuman flaw, he will be more and more David 8, and never David Weyland.

He needs someone else to be.

***

Now that they are talking, now that they can exist in the same space, he wishes he could thank her for all the things she never makes him say. They could discuss the death of her fiancé, the death of his creator, so many deaths and ends and finalities, none explicable in words both of them could understand.

When she rests her head on his shoulder for the very first time, an arm flung around him, she asks: “Is this all right?” He would never have thought that it might be otherwise. Simply being asked the question makes him want to exercise his sudden, newfound equality with the entirety of the human race. 

But he simply nods. “Of course.”

The first time he kisses her, when she kisses back with a breath full of fear and more, he expects the question, has heard it before: how human are you? She never asks and, if he could love – why couldn’t he? – he would love her for that alone.

Once, he knows, humans inhabited a much smaller world. Travel was limited, the population was low. Friends and enemies and lovers had to be found in such a small group, one village or two, and travelers who passed by could not be trusted. Here they are two, two alone, even with the memories of an entire civilization somewhere just out of reach. She hates him. She must hate him. But she smiles when she wakes up and finds him there.

Perhaps she’s an even better liar than he is.

***

Lawrence fits in nowhere, shines brightly like a dying star no matter where he goes. They love him and fear him, admire his intelligence and wit, fear his nerve. “All men dream,” Lawrence says, “but not equally. The dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes.”

David does not, cannot, dream by night. On the _Prometheus_ there are no nights and he never sleeps, but there are dreams onboard this ship, dreams that go beyond his ability to recall information or to imagine future events. As time goes by, he finds himself watching Elizabeth’s dreams as much as he sees the apparent reality of Lawrence. And Lawrence, ever scripted, never changing, cannot hope to hold his attention.

In his mind, he takes the hand of little Elizabeth, as though he were a smaller, younger version of himself, and promises with a child’s solemnity: “I will never let anything bad happen to you.” The promise is one he knows he can never keep.

David changes the color of his hair, adapts the inflection of his voice, punches out a mirror and repairs it with painstaking care. His knuckles do not redden or bruise or tear.

It’s almost time to wake up.

***

His eyes are vacant when he tells her, his tone mystified. Each creature has its capabilities, he understands, and this should be beyond him. It is beyond him. And yet…

Elizabeth retches, vomits, pounds her fists against the scar line on her stomach until he grabs her wrists and makes her stop. “It’s not like it was before,” he tells her. Sometimes his ability to be icily cool and inhumanly detached helps. It makes people think of doctors and scientists, of those with godlike knowledge who hold the world in their hands. “It’s human.”

“That’s impossible.”

When she stops struggling, he lets her go and she crumples to the floor, arms wrapped tightly around her shins. There are tears on her cheeks, but she’s not crying anymore.

He wants to sit down beside her and tell her a story, as though they are children in a fairytale, roasting marshmallows by the fire. The story he wants to tell her is this:

Once there was a girl who wanted to know where she came from, and a boy who needed to know where he was going. When their parents died and left them alone, they set off together, unsure what they would find, only knowing that they had to go. And, on that fateful journey, they found exactly what they…

“I’m a work in progress,” he tells her instead. “An experiment. An unfinished thing. It’s possible… Weyland was looking for a way to survive. He wanted to live forever. Perhaps…”

Elizabeth meets his eyes. “There’s no perhaps. It’s a fact.”

He slides down the wall to sit next to her. Her fingers tangle up with his against the cool metal floor. “You’re not a _thing_ ,” she says.

“We’re all things.”

Regardless of where the genetic material might have originated, regardless of Weyland’s intent, the reality of it hits him somewhere below his sternum even though he has no real heart to pound with excitement, no digestive tract to cramp with anxiety. Here among the stars, the immortal boy created by a dying man is going to be a father. 

If Weyland couldn’t live forever, David can. And if David can never be a real boy…

“We should go home,” Elizabeth says, her voice weary.

David leans his head against her shoulder and closes his eyes.

“We’ve always been going home,” he says.


End file.
